The share of businesses without a website
Plenty of real businesses have no website on record. We measured how common that is, by industry, subcategory and state.
A website has become the default front door for a business, so it can be surprising how many businesses do not list one. Of the 7,704,726 listings listed on CheckThisBiz, 1,608,756 have no website recorded. That is 21%, or about one in five.
No website is not the same as no business. A listing without one can belong to an established place that relies on walk-in traffic, word of mouth, a phone line or a social media page. We also count social pages and review-site profiles as not a website, because they are not a site the business controls. So think of this figure as "no website of its own on record", not "not online at all".
By industry
The share varies a lot by the kind of business. It is highest in Auto & Travel, where 30% of listings have no website, and lowest in Health Care, at 11%. The data does not record why, but one possible factor is size: chains and larger organizations usually publish a page for every location, while many small independent businesses do not.
| Group | No website |
|---|---|
| 30% | |
| 29% | |
| 28% | |
| 27% | |
| 27% | |
| 22% | |
| 19% | |
| 15% | |
| 13% | |
| 11% |
The subcategories least likely to list a website
Going one level deeper, among subcategories with at least 3,852 listings, Discount Store has the highest share without a website (56%), followed by Convenience Store (46%) and Agricultural Service (43%).
| Subcategory | No website |
|---|---|
| 56% | |
| 46% | |
| 43% | |
| 41% | |
| 39% | |
| 38% | |
| 34% | |
| 34% | |
| 33% | |
| 33% | |
| 31% | |
| 31% |
And at the other end, the subcategories where a website is most nearly universal:
| Subcategory | No website |
|---|---|
| 6.5% | |
| 7.8% | |
| 7.8% | |
| 7.8% | |
| 8.5% | |
| 8.8% | |
| 9.1% | |
| 9.2% |
State by state
Among states, the share of listings with no website is highest in Mississippi (31%) and lowest in District of Columbia (13%). Differences between states partly reflect their business mix, since some industries list websites far more often than others, and partly how thoroughly each area is covered by the underlying data sources.
| State | No website |
|---|---|
| 31% | |
| 30% | |
| 29% | |
| 28% | |
| 27% | |
| 27% | |
| 26% | |
| 25% | |
| 24% | |
| 24% | |
| 23% | |
| 23% | |
| 23% | |
| 23% | |
| 23% | |
| 23% | |
| 23% | |
| 23% | |
| 22% | |
| 22% | |
| 22% | |
| 21% | |
| 21% | |
| 21% | |
| 21% | |
| 20% | |
| 20% | |
| 20% | |
| 20% | |
| 20% | |
| 20% | |
| 20% | |
| 19% | |
| 19% | |
| 19% | |
| 19% | |
| 19% | |
| 19% | |
| 18% | |
| 18% | |
| 18% | |
| 18% | |
| 18% | |
| 18% | |
| 18% | |
| 17% | |
| 17% | |
| 17% | |
| 16% | |
| 16% | |
| 13% |
Why it matters when you are checking a business
For anyone deciding whether to call or hire a business, a missing website is a gap in the evidence, not a red flag on its own. A long-running barbershop or a family restaurant may never have needed one. What matters more is whether the details that do exist agree with each other: the name, phone number and address, and how long any website has been around. CheckThisBiz runs those checks for you; see how in its methodology, or check a business now.
If you run a business with no website, a simple one-page site with your name, address, phone number, hours and services is enough to give customers something to check. Our guide on making your online listings consistent covers the basics.
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